'number:true' makes field is required in jquery validation

Question

I am using the jQuery Validation plugin

I want one of my fields to be a number, but it is not a required field.

The thing is, when I set number: true, it makes the field required. Why is that? I tried to add required: false with number: true, but to no avail.

This my code:

name : {
    required:false,
    number:true
}

I am not setting an error message, but it shows the default error message: "please enter a valid number."

Answer 1

In the source code they are using this regex to validate a number:

/^-?(?:\d+|\d{1,3}(?:,\d{3})+)(?:\.\d+)?$/

When the field is empty( "" ), it does not pass the test:

/^-?(?:\d+|\d{1,3}(?:,\d{3})+)(?:\.\d+)?$/.test("")
//false

Answer 2

You might try writing your own validator. It's not too hard. Something like:

$.validator.addMethod
(
    "number2",
    function (value, element)
    {
        // Remove numberish characters.
        value = value.replace("$", "").replace(",", "");

        // A regex might be better but this works too.
        if (!isNaN(parseFloat(value)))
        {
            $(element).val(parseFloat(value));
            return true;
        }
        else if (value === "") // handle empty value
        {
            return true;
        }
        else
        {
            return false;
        }
    },
    "Numeric only."
);

Then apply the rule, for example:

$.validator.addClassRules("numeric", { number2: true });

A variation of this theme can be applied to integer or currency values and, of course, you could get quite complex with validation and "cleaning" of data.